Storage Nation

It’s crazy to see how focused we are, and how many folks we have working day in day out on being the best partner for VMware – for VMware themselves, their partners, and their customers. This is the 2nd inaugural “EMC/VMware pre-VMworld meeting” – we share/learn/warm up for the event.

I read with interest yesterday’s announcement from IBM that they are to acquire Storwize, a vendor of NAS compression technology.  Maybe I don’t understand enough about the technology, however I don’t see much benefit in installing an application in front of my NAS environment to only achieve between 50-90% reduction in storage.  What’s more surprising is that IBM would want to acquire this technology. Firstly, let’s summarise the benefits of the Storwize offering: Better Storage Utilisation Lowers Capital and Operational Costs Better Energy Efficiency These bullet points are taken directly from the Storwize website and are then expanded into more detail.  Whilst implementing compression may save some storage space in the short term, it doesn’t address the overall reasons for growth within an organisation and at some stage capacity will reach previous levels, regardless of the ability to compress that data.  I’d also agree that compression reduces some capital costs – but these will be via cost avoidance rather than the ability to remove existing hardware.  This implies that the savings can only be made if significant growth exists in the environment in the first place.

Sure, VMworld is about learning.   It’s also about networking with people – friends, colleagues, customers, and even respected competitors.   Heck – I’m in full on cram mode now.   We are prepping content, kit to support the hands-on-labs, finalizing face-melting demos, giveaways (1 iPad per hour), and much, much more.   Hey, I’m getting daily “where is your content” nag emails (well deserved!) from the VMworld crew. but – it’s also about having a little fun while saying THANK YOU to the customers Since I started being “Mr. VMware at EMC” – one thing I said to Joe was “I want EMC to not only win in the VMware context on our own merits, but have fun while doing it!” So… here are details on the VMworld 2010 EMC/VMware customer appreciation party… Read on (including how to get an invite)…   Where :   (Temple) 540 HOWARD ST (2 blocks from Moscone Center) When: Tuesday August 31, 2010 6:30-10:30pm What: EMC’s Customer appreciation party – our chance to have fun, and thank EMC customers and partners.   There will be great food, two open bars, and in general – a good fun time Who: It’s by invite – only up to 500 people – have your EMC team reach out to their vSpecialists and Brittany Coulson.

So – do these ideas work together?  Do they complement each other or compete?   What’s the source of these questions Chad – and why are you asking them?  (BTW – this topic is one I’m covering at VMworld, along with some of the testing data) If you’re interested, read on… Storage IO Control (SIOC), along with Network IO Control (NIOC) represent VMware’s first forays into expanding the IDEA of DRS (which is in essence distributed resource prioritization) beyond CPU cycles and memory – and into storage and network IO subsystems.

The good news — there's general consensus from the enterprise IT organization I speak with that — yes, they'd like to pursue a private cloud model. The challenging part — as they look around their data centers, all they can see is the legacy of past decisions: incompatible architectures, stove-pipe stacks and the rest.  It's like an archeology project: you can see the layers of different waves that have come through the IT organization. How can you move forward when all you can see is history

Whenever there is a major VMware release, a common question from EMCers, EMC customers, and EMC partners is: “what is supported day one, and what will break if I upgrade?” Any vendor who tells you “nothing will break” is either: lying (lying maliciously) delusional (lying, but unintentionally) – if you’re a competitor that piles on to this post, remember I have most competitor’s products myself, and I’ll call you on it a one-product company As soon as you have a broad portfolio – getting everything to line up is impossible.  As we near major VMware releases, as the “face for VMware inside EMC”, I rally across the product teams to make sure we’re aligning.   We all work hard, and push as much as possible – but inevitably there are little time gaps.    They are all on eLab and the VMware HCL – but I’ve found it’s useful to have it integrated in one place.  So – I’m taking the high road here and being as explicit as possible – even with gaps .   Read on for details, but in a nutshell – core storage support is a rock on day one, and almost everything else lands within Q3, with some Q4 stragglers. BTW – also getting the inevitable “can I get a Vblock with vSphere 4.1?”.  That one is a firm NO right now.   Remember – the core idea of a Vblock is that it’s all integrated and tested so you don’t need to.   That means that by definition it will always lag any given component a little bit – and that’s a GOOD thing.   Of course, expect an update soon Remember everyone – always test before putting anything into production!!!! Read on for details… Storage: Platforms = YES.  Day 1 support is perfect – and you can see it here .   Every EMC storage platform target (Iomega, CLARiiON, EMC Unified/Celerra, Symmetrix and VPLEX) is on the VMware HCL day one across all protocols.  This was a chunk of work – so thank you from me to the VMware and EMC teams that made that happen

Normally, I try to keep the discussions on the blog technology focused, but getting questions on this one, so wanted to put my 2 cents out there, just like I shared with the vSpecialist team internally.  What is going on here?   Well, here are my cliff-notes on it.

I suppose it’s inevitable that the EMC competitors would attack as EMC has decided to make things clearer by not being in the business of OFFERING Atmos as a service for any additional customers (it is staying up for existing users). So – why did we do it?  Well – in basic terms, we made a mistake, and are correcting it.  (BTW – that’s **MY** view – another valid view is that it was a necessary step to get the ball rolling). In more detail… People had a hard mental time understanding whether EMC was positioning Atmos as a: An EMC PRODUCT – as a Virtual Appliance on top of traditional storage models, or as physical appliance designed for maximum scale and lowest cost.  OR….

I’ve been crazy busy for a while – and it’s a beautiful thing to see the vSpecialist team (aka “Chad’s Army”) grow and blossom.   The newbs are becoming vets, and helping the other newbs.   It’s becoming self-sustaining, and it means that I can be focused on a lot of other things – which is great. I’m very proud of the team collectively and the individuals that comprise it. It means I have no lack of confidence (though I wish I was there – work/life balance) that they go to Cisco Live 2010 and cover it without me.  It means that craziness like the picture below happens – yes… that is John Chambers in the VCE booth getting his vSpecialist shirt We try to have a lot of fun – and I love the team. It’s a bit crazy because today these two links crossed my path – posts by Elias Khnaser and Nigel Poulton It’s crazy to have outside folks making those comments.  Flattering, but they give me WAY too much credit.

Folks – these plugins rock, and are free.  They are all FULLY SUPPORTED – just like any EMC product.  As an EMC customer or partner, you can call 1-800-SVC-4-EMC on them.  They are simple, and take almost no time to install.   If you’re an EMC customers – there’s NO reason not to be running these.    There are some great recent updates to EMC’s plugins I want people to know about: EMC’s Virtual Storage Integrator 3.0 This is the “big daddy” of EMC’s plugins – provides visibility/mapping of all sorts of things and some provisioning capabilities.